A songbird, the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris), shows perceptual constancy for acoustic spectral structure.

Abstract

Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) learned 2 series of discrimination problems with complex tones. Within each problem the complex tones contained the same fundamental frequency but differed in the relational structure of spectral components. The S+ spectral structure was constant across problems within a series; the S− spectral structure and the fundamental frequency of the 2 complex tones varied across problems. The 2 series used different spectral structures as S+. For both series the starlings were able to discriminate among complex tones according to spectral structure. The starlings transferred to novel complex tone discriminations but did not transfer to complex tone discriminations in which the reinforcement contingencies associated with spectral structure were reversed